


da capo al fine

by kaermorons



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Explicit Peril, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Character Death, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Loss of Identity, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons/pseuds/kaermorons
Summary: In music, 'da capo' means 'from the beginning'. 'Da capo al fine' means 'from the beginning to the end'.Jaskier's swan song, and a reflection on life.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #003





	da capo al fine

_He lost him._

He finally makes it to the coast. He is on one of the more secluded areas of the beach, considering the hurricane blowing in on the horizon. So really, the whole shoreline is secluded, lonely.

Like him.

A bitter laugh rips from him, but it is lost to the sharp winds. He thinks he is crying, but the water on his face is too cold to be tears. It feels like small pinpricks of ice, salt settling into the wrinkles on his face, borne from years of squinting in the darkness to get a glimpse of moonlight. His lute sits on the sand beside him, atop his meager possessions. The walking is admittedly a lot more difficult when there’s no horse to carry a pack or two. His body aches, but when has he not ached in his miserable life?

Several things happen at once.

The temperature drops sharply, icy cold fingers wrapping around his shoulder. He gasps and turns to look. The wind is too loud; it must have covered their footsteps. There is nobody there. The beach he stands on seems wider now.

Lightning strikes next to him, ozone burning through his senses the same way the crack of energy singes his skin. He stumbles away from the strike point a few steps, blinking away the burning light in his eyes and gaping at the burning pile of his belongings.

The storm is coming. The forest at the edge of the shoreline seems deep enough that it could provide shelter from the rain and wind, so he runs. He leaves his charred things, more interested in saving himself. He is right; the forest is dense and thick, covering the sky save for a few crooked lines of crown shyness from the uppermost boughs. He still cannot believe how close he had come to certain death.

He walks deeper and deeper into the woods, frowning at his surroundings. The brisk chill from the beach is gone, replaced by a balmy spring-like climate. He turns back to make sure he hadn’t gone mad, but his stomach sinks when he cannot see the coast and cannot hear the roar of the wind or the crash of the waves.

_Probably because of the lightning, you idiot._

The thought does not calm him whatsoever. He wanders the woods, under an intricate pattern of woven vines and branches. They let in less and less light the deeper he walks. He has the unnerving feeling of being watched, followed. After hours of maneuvering through the brush, with no luck finding a trail, he hears a splash.

His head turns to better locate the noise, and when it comes again, he walks carefully. The trees seem to sway in his wake. Whatever is out there could be another person, but it could just as well be a beast that likes the taste of human flesh. He had seen many of those, in his years walking the Path with Geralt.

The reminder of the Witcher’s name slots everything into place. Why the woods look so familiar, the rhythmic splash, silence, grumble, repeat. A look at his hands brings a bright turquoise blue to his eyes. His stomach drops again, like when he could no longer see the ocean.

He knows his lines. He knows this scene well enough in his dreams—nightmares, that he could play every part to perfection. He has relived this moment over and over again. Why now? Is he asleep? A pinch to his arm proves otherwise. He can still feel. He approaches the bent-over man at the rivers’ edge, nervousness sealing his throat in anticipation of what comes next.

The man with the net does not turn to acknowledge him. Geralt does not acknowledge him. It feels like a cold whistling wind across his hollow heart. “Geralt?” he whispers, afraid. “What’s happening?”

But those are not his lines, and Geralt knows it. Geralt straightens up and turns to him, glacier slow. He stumbles back hastily, retreating at the sight that greets him.

Geralt’s eyes are whited over, the way the blind and elderly look. Those teeth, sharp and vicious, wolves’ teeth, bare in a feral snarl. _All the better to eat you with, my dear._ He drops the net and begins to advance.

He runs.

The trees whip at his face as he desperately seeks a trail, anything to take him safely away from the predator on his tail. Everything in his soul screams to go back and let Geralt take care of it, but that was _not Geralt._ The icy air cuts through his senses and dives into his throat. Nightmarish pressure fills his neck, crushing his airway and leaving him gasping and coughing blood.

Just like before.

He panics, arms grasping out for anything to help him up off his feet, but there’s nothing to gain purchase on. Rough bark rots away under his hands, crumbling into snow that does not melt. A crashing sound breaks through the trees, and he sees the face of a white wolf, but not _his_ White Wolf, no. This one is white down to its eyes, the only color on its body being the angry splash of dark blood across its mouth. He reaches for a tree and jumps back in time for a strike of lightning to hit it. He’s thrown onto his back from the force.

Between one breath and the next, the forest is plunged into night, a sickly sweet smell burning his throat at every heaved breath. He pushes himself as hard as he can, desperate to seek shelter and hide from the danger. He knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that should he stop running, he would be killed and eaten alive.

The baying howl of a wolf catches his attention, the noise freezing him to the bones with fear. He just escaped a wolf hell-belt on killing him, now there’s another?

He starts to formulate a theory: he is probably reliving some hallucinatory perversion of his memories, and he is in danger. He needs to keep running from the wolf but doesn’t know how long it will be until he tires.

He takes one step to start running from the not-so-distant creature but curses aloud when his leg immediately sinks knee-deep in a muddy swamp. It’s not very deep, but it’s enough of a hindrance that the memory comes racing back to him. 

He tended to get a bit close to hunts when it least suited his delicate human sensibilities. Maybe one out of every ten monsters goes after him on hunts, much to Geralt’s displeasure. This monster...it’s bad.

He never got a good look at it, which makes the huge, dark beast hurtling after him that much more terrifying. He crawls frantically through the mud, hands sinking in as it starts to rain. He lets out a choked sob as he claws his way to solid earth. One of his boots gets sucked off by the thick sludge, leaving him disoriented and slightly nauseous as he goes.

He finds a sturdy tree root to push off of—there goes the other boot—and tries not to let his breathing get too fast. He knows he gets a bit fainty on certain hunts. A low growl behind him has him gasping unevenly again, however.

Almost untouched by the mud, stands Geralt. No, not Geralt. It’s that _Not_ Geralt, again, with white eyes and nothing but disdain and hatred on his face. His blood runs cold again, shocking him to his feet. The mud drips off him in globs, the swamp suddenly still. Their eyes betray nothing, expressions blank and neutral. Emotionally, he has already taken off sprinting. A stupid part of him that still clings to affection for his darling Witcher snarls out, “What are you?!”

The answer doesn’t come, again. The same snarl, and hard set of a jaw come instead. Not Geralt must cross the muddy swamp before he can reach him, so the moment Not Geralt moves, he takes off into the night again.

Heart in his throat, he flies through the forest, ignoring a badly-twisted ankle and the taste of mud and terror on his tongue. The great snarling beast—other than Not Geralt—crashes through the trail to face him. The surprise knocks him over. Above him is the massive white wolf, eyes just as white, mouth just as bloody as its paws are muddy. There’s lightning in its glare, and the air around him claps a massive roll of thunder when the beast barks. He squeaks in terror and scrambles back, rolling down a small ravine into—

A shallow riverbed covers him almost entirely, the water blood-warm. He gasps out of it and looks around, getting up off his knees. This forest is different, not a swampy cypress in sight. He is amidst bone-dry manzanita, all of them aflame. Despite the lick of fire on his skin, he still shivers, cold and lost and afraid. There’s a smudge of dirt and soot on his skin, but there’s no mud. He still has no shoes. This won’t be good.

He pulls his doublet up over his face to block out the smoke, steadily filling the small clearing. His mind races far too fast to remember how he got out of this one, how he survived a hastily-cast _Igni._ A loud growl at his back tells him he’s not alone, and he stands ready to defend himself from whatever threatens him.

He is no longer a wide-eyed Oxenfurt grad. He is stabbing wit, and hundreds of miles walked in a year. He is clenched fists and disdain and a soldier protecting a flag, a crown of white that loves him not. He is the licking fire at his calf; he is the rage of a hundred sunsets and a thousand falling stars.

Not Geralt faces him, unburned. Of course.

“For someone who wanted nothing more than to get me off their back, you really don’t act like it!” He snarls nastily, heart surging for the Witcher even now, as it all burns down around him.

Not Geralt tilts his head, and for a moment, it’s all so familiar he wants to succumb; he wants to bend the knee and apologize for even implying his disloyalty. His knees are stronger than his heart, thankfully. The curious expression on Not Geralt’s face turns to smirking murderous intent. He lifts his sword—steel for men—and steps as to strike him down, but there’s another clap of thunder, blowing outwards from the center of the clearing, extinguishing the magicked fire instantly. Where the lightning struck the small pond, a white wolf now stands, cleaned of mud, cleaned of blood, eyes now black, pointed at Not Geralt.

He takes the opportunity for what it’s worth, and runs…

Nearly off a cliff. He shouts and windmills his arms, regaining his balance just in time for a few small stones to trip down off the narrow ledge. He grabs the cliff face and looks around. He’s high in the mountains, by the thin air in his lungs, and he’s…

Oh gods, he’s _here._

He’s all alone, not being prodded along by witches and dwarves, so it must be after—the descent down the Kestrel Mountains, alone and heartbroken.

He still doesn’t have his things. They’re...somewhere. Far away. He takes a breath and shimmies along the pass. A shortcut, the dwarves had called it. He finds himself on the desolate mountain that had crushed his heart underfoot. A bitter laugh bubbles up, unbidden, from his throat, but by the time it hits the air, it sounds like a sob.

He cries as he walks, mostly silent but sometimes vocally melancholy. The horrible, horrible things he says to himself. He rids himself of his jacket, the color of his bleeding heart, leaving it on the path behind him. He doesn’t care anymore. He’d go...somewhere. Somewhere he doesn’t have to think about twenty-two years of wasted love, effort, and friendship. Somewhere close to the edge of the world…

No. He’d been there. Had a jaunt. Probably wouldn’t do it again.

Probably.

He wanders the path, seeing where they’d made camp that first night, the remains of Sir Eyck. He encounters no monsters, no perilous creatures. It’s just him, alone in the deafening silence. He thinks about lightning, about freezing, about crumbling snow that doesn’t melt.

A growl from behind him alerts him to the fact he’s not alone. Surprisingly, it isn’t Not Geralt. Considering he never saw the man again after what happened, he isn’t surprised. It’s also, concerningly, not the white wolf, the one who had been protecting him.

It’s four other wolves, half-starved and mangy. He knows they won’t stop until he’s dinner. What happens if he dies here? Does he stay? Will he rot like dead trees, become the earth once more, to become life later, again?

Sounds like a bloody chore.

So he runs.

The wolves are almost as tired as he is, exhausted from hours and hours of travel. The chase is almost at a walk, all of them panting and fatigued by the time he runs out of trail. He’s back on the edge of another cliff, staring down at the edge. Even the wolves have stopped, letting him decide what to do.

“I wish I could feed you,” he rasps. “I have nothing left.”

The wolves do not understand and descend.

He leaps.

Far, far beneath him, the ocean rises to meet him. He turns in time to let it crash into his back, and he sinks.

He knows, peripherally, that the weight of the ocean on a body should crush a person at a certain depth. Yet, he does not die. He does not need to breathe; he does not need to feel or do. If he could, he would sigh. In the weightlessness of the ocean, he finds peace. He finds solitude. He finds hope.

Hope was always such a flighty thing in his life, appearing for a few moments in a smile and disappearing with a sharp word. He always believed hope was an illusion that just paved the way to stupidity. He’d seen enough countries laid bare by the greed of some, and the actionless hope of others. He’d seen children starve, wives wither, and whole families wasted by the careless acts of others.

_I must be dead; my life and regrets are passing before me._

He suddenly sinks faster, and the weight on him becomes heavy for the first time. He shouts, but there is no air in his lungs to scream. As he chokes on the sea, he thrashes wildly, the bright surface slipping further from his kicking limbs.

He’s dropped in a desert as if by portal. He’d traveled by portal only a few times, and each time was much less unpleasant than being dropped from his watery grave onto a salty, sandy wasteland.

After coughing out all the water in his lungs and catching his breath, he looks around.

Alone again, on the sand. He bitterly recalls the hysterical sense of freedom he’d felt in the face of a hurricane. Perhaps it was because he knew he would be dead soon.

Why then, does he still fight? Why does he stand against the false face of his love and devotion? If he wished for death, why does he fight so hard to be alone and alive?

The desert has no answers for him. So he walks.

He remembers, decades ago, before he even knew the meaning of Witcher, nightmares of his childhood. He grew up in a large family, laden with siblings, cousins, and doting friends. He thrived in those moments and feared when it would all change.

In his dreams, of course, was when he was most alone.

He would walk the desert, just a child in his sleeping gown, calling out the names of those he knew, and even those he didn’t like but still knew. He would have asked for the company of a fly in those desperate moments.

He isn’t sure how far he walks, but the desert remains the same. Figures, the memory of a dream would not operate with the same rules as the memory of a real event.

He sees a tree, barren and dry from the ceaseless sun. Despite the sun, he’s still cold, cold as ice. And when he touches it—

Ice he becomes.

He’s frozen in place, bare feet sealed to the ground, and hands stuck to the tree. He can hardly move his eyes to look around and has to control his breathing again. Gods, he’s so cold.

His eyes alight on some strange shape: a signpost. Through bleary, frosted-over eyes, he reads it and remembers this memory with dawning horror.

This is a memory of Geralt, and where memories of Geralt went, Not Geralt and a white wolf made of lightning follow. He jerks his shoulders at the first noise in the still icy forest, the jingle of wind through key-chimes.

Villagers leave the keys that lost their locks strung on trees, gifts to the goddesses, or the fae. He jerks his shoulders again, and a few icicles shatter off his hands, ripping the ends of his undershirt, and some patches of skin with it. Once he can move his hands, he works on freeing his frozen feet, almost black with cold. He takes off running again, any which direction, though subconsciously, surely the one that would lead him straight to trouble.

The white wolf sees him first, finds him. He yelps as he’s suddenly pounced into the snow, arms flailing wildly in the powder. The hot smell of rank death reeks from the wolf’s mouth, growling and pawing at his chest, taking off more shreds of his shirt and digging into his skin painfully. He writhes and whines, desperate for some semblance of mercy.

The wolf suddenly stops and gets off of him. It doesn’t go far, curling up next to his frigid body like how a dog lays with a good master. He can hardly breathe for the tension. Suddenly, but slowly, the wolf lays its snout on top of his middle, gently growling until he untensed a little. Its eyes are not white, not black, but golden.

The tears turn to ice on his lashes immediately, practically blinding him. He weeps at the memory of the bitterly cold prewinter memory, caught in this icy forest without lodgings. He was held so tightly that night, curled up together with a Witcher, and he slept like there was no safer place but Geralt’s arms.

The wolf whines when his breath hitches on quiet sobs. It lays more weight on top of him, and he hesitantly buries his hands in the wolf’s thick pelt. The beast is very warm, and scarred underneath the tough exterior. He knows what this night means to him.

It means goodbye.

A few hours’ rest, that’s all he gets before Not Geralt creeps into the clearing with his steel sword once more. His white eyes stand out starkly from his face, almost glowing in the moonlight. Where Geralt’s eyes glowed a warm gold, these eyes glint hard as the steel in his hand.

The wolf positions itself between him and Not Geralt, growl turning into a snarl. He turns to run but finds his knees burning with frostbite. He has to claw his way out of the clearing, unable to do anything but listen to the fight going on behind him.

The wolf cries out with a wail, and the fleshy sound of a killing blow echoes like a heartbeat in his head. He cries out as well, the freezing pain leeching into his heart. He wishes the wolf a silent thank you, and goodbye.

The lightning strikes next.

Entwined in the vines that had their eyes on him since the beginning, he feels as frozen as he did before. Distantly, his mind tells him that the vines are poisonous, triple clusters of leaves and black berries from blooming yellow flowers and tiny white clusters of flat-top flowers growing all around him. The smell is disgusting and, at the same time, sweet.

He does not have to move to stand, the structure of vines keeping him upright. In the leaf-strewn clearing, there is nobody. He hardly thinks that _he_ is there. He lets his body sink back, weary with the knowledge that his protector, his lightning wolf, is probably dead.

Maybe he should have just died and saved himself all the trouble of being alive to witness this.

Suddenly the vines twist, and he is deposited none too gently on the forest floor. The tangle above him looms massive and deadly but holds a shake to its leave, one he’s had in his hands before, that speaks of sadness and loss. It’s letting him go.

So he runs.

His frozen bones carry him through the trees, trying his best not to let his memory take another swing at him.

When his feet hit the sand, he gasps. The feeling on his bare feet shocks him to attention, and his eyes land on a man on the shoreline. He would be nervous at the sight of white hair once more, but something in his heart tells him that were he to turn, he’d see golden eyes once more.

The storm is coming fast. He has to get the man to safety. He has to get Geralt safe. He tries to call out to him, but the strong wind swallows his voice. As he walks out to him, the woods shrinking back behind him, he gasps as his left hand crumbles away, unmelting snow on the sand. He quickens his pace, closing the distance before it’s too late.

Up close, like this, he can make out the slumped line of Geralt’s shoulders, head almost bent in prayer, in mourning. With a finality tinged with desperation, _don’t be too late—_

Several things happen at once. Lightning strikes beside them as his hand falls to Geralt’s shoulder, and as he turns—

It’s not Geralt. He’s falling. He’s falling to the sand in a cluster of snow that goes unnoticed as he watches himself gape at the burning lute, his burning belongings. He watches himself run to the forest and watches the woods close in on itself, vines weaving as despair claims him.

And then the sea washes the snow of himself away.

In the woods, the man hears a splash.

_He lost him. But he found himself. And that was all he’d ever have._


End file.
